Philly BOMBSHELL: New Evidence Further Exonerates Wrongfully Convicted Clerics; Will Justice Be Served? Will the Media Ever Take Notice?

Newly discovered medical records provide shocking new evidence that two priests and a Catholic school teacher were most certainly falsely convicted of molesting an altar boy, a new court filing charges.

Veteran journalist Ralph Cipriano – who has been tenaciously uncovering the massive fraud surrounding the prosecutions of Catholic clergy in Philadelphia – has exclusively revealed that a brief has been filed in Pennsylvania Superior Court seeking a new trial for convicted ex-teacher Bernard Shero.

Burton A. Rose, Shero's attorney, filed his brief based on the records which Philadelphia Court of Common Please Judge Lillian Ransom refused, for some reason, to allow the jury to see in the criminal trial. Shero and a number of priests were then later convicted after two very controversial trials in 2012 and 2013.

Stunning information which the judge would not let the jury see

Twisted face, twisted stories:Accuser Dan Gallagher

The criminal convictions were based on the wild stories of accuser Dan Gallagher, who claimed at two different trials that three different men – Shero, Fr. Charles Engelhardt, and former priest Edward Avery – somehow raped and molested him at various times when he served as a Philadelphia altar boy in the late 1990s.

According to the new filing as reported by Cipriano, newly uncovered medical records show that Gallagher made at least seven wildly conflicting statements about him being abused – and not being abused.

At one point, Gallagher – an admitted drug addict who reportedly has been arrested at least six times and has been in 23 drug rehabs – told drug counselors that he had "no history of physical or sexual abuse."

And on three separate occasions, Gallagher told drug counselors that his older brother had been arrested for molestation. In truth, Gallagher's older brother, James Gallagher, is a recently licensed attorney in Pennsylvania and has never been arrested at all.

And – most notably – in none of the seven cited statements did Gallagher ever mention any episodes of abuse by a Catholic priest.

Surely, if this information had been put in front of a jury, these men would not now be sitting in prison for crimes which they very likely did not commit.

The media goes M.I.A. – willfully?

This not the first time that the wild claims of accuser Gallagher have been called into serious doubt. (Some of our previous posts – here and here, for example – document further problems with Gallagher's wild stories and the vengeful prosecutions of these men by Philadelphia D.A. Seth Williams.)

For example, Cipriano exclusively reported last March that an alternate juror during the Engelhardt-Shero trial came forward to say after the guilty verdicts that the convictions of the two men were a "tragic miscarriage of justice."

Yet the mainstream media has remained deafeningly silent, especially the media in Philadelphia, which, one might imagine, would take an interest in this gripping tale of injustice perpetrated by a vengeful publicity-hound D.A. and based on the stories of an admitted junkie and criminal.

Below his article, Cipriano posted a salient comment addressing the gross negligence of the Philadelphia mainstream media. It reads in part:

"[T]he [Philadelphia Inquirer], the Daily News, the weeklies, the TV stations all remain on the sidelines, apparently determined to keep silent. If they got involved, some innocent guys stuck in jail would be out by now. And Seth Williams would have had to answer some questions he's been stonewalling on for more than a year. But thanks to the wall of silence, he continues to get away with it."

Comments

Also to be held accountable is Common Please Judge Lillian Ransom who willfully withheld evidence from the jury…how does a judge get permission to withold evidence unless she is part of the gay mafia out to destroy our priests. Time the public began expecting public office employees to be held accountable for everything they do…all the way from a city janitor up to the president. time we demand civil servants answer to us, their employers.

What do you think Danny's response will be to all these statements – "I don't remember, I was high on drugs, I don't remember." The one question he should have to answer is how and why he picked these individuals. Did he find an old parish bulletin eith his mother's calendar and based his lies using the material in there? He should be have his criminal record reinstated and locked up for the crimes he has committed and be held responsible for the violation of the civil rights of the innocent men he put in prison. Danny and Seth could be cell mates

Those individauls view all priests as gulity – even the innocent ones. All they care about is bashing the RCC and the priests who associated with it. What we need is the RCC to stand up and stop paying out money for every allegation as they have done in the past. What has happened in Philadelphia is a result of a DA looking to further his political career and his ability to get the support of a number of judges. The public needs to demand an investigation of all parties invovled from the DA, ADAs to the judges to the investigators on the cases in the 2 trials

They are in no way equal or comparable issues. First a jury found these priests guilty. Proven falsely accused priests are rarer than hen's teeth. Victims of priests over all have never even had their complaints acknowleged; yet alone been compensated for their rapes.

So innocent men should sit in prison for the sins of others? From start to finish both trials were an inside job with Seth as its general.He should start prepping himself just as he guided Daniel Gallagher to face the firing squad and be held responsible for his actions.

The "jury found these priests guilty" because they were lied to by the corrupt prosecutors and media (aka persecutors), and the rest of their bigoted sycophants and lackeys (you and others similarly dishonestly disposed). About which, untold numbers of innocents sitting in prison, some on death row, are all too willing to provide their testimony. Many of them guilty, only, of being poor or otherwise oppressed and/or marginalized (eg. Catholic priests).

One should never underestimate the intelligence or committment/dedication of their opposition when spewing the usual 'talking points' – it can serve to be fatal to their [unholy] cause.

"The public needs to demand an investigation of all parties invovled from the DA, ADAs to the judges to the investigators on the cases in the 2 trials."

You're absolutely right. The people – sheeple – of Philadelphia need to wake up and take action. There are huge miscarriages of justice playing out right in their back yard. Whenever I meet anybody from Philadelphia I comment, "ah, the land of witch hunts and kangaroo courts." Predictably, they're clueless. Accounts of innocent men deprived of liberty don't ring any bells. Yes, the despicable media black-out on these cases doesn't help, but with excellent sites like bigtrial.net and TMR there is really no excusing their ignorance and apathy.

To your point, there is a useful list on bigtrial.net of those involved:

We are advised (the 10th at 952AM) that the priest and the victim cases “are in no way equal or comparable issues”. Indeed?

Looking at them in light of my points about the fundamental derangements in law that have been effected, then they are indeed “comparable”, and they demonstrate ‘equally’ the derangements, although each from a different side of the coin.

Thus, for example, in terms of the i) presumption of innocence of the accused and ii) evidentiary principles, we see that the Victimist/Abusenik ‘reforms’ have now i) effectively reversed the principle of presumption-of-innocence and ii) reversed and deranged the evidentiary principles in such a way that ‘credibility’ of the accuser rather than evidence of the alleged crime is sufficient, while also making it far more difficult for the accused to effectively confront the accuser (by removing from examination substantial areas of the accuser/allegant’s own behavior and past).

In addition to which – of course – the media has hugely deranged the balance by the propagandistic gambit of tainting the jury by ‘reporting’ in such a way that the jurors (i.e. the public) are tampered-with and tainted before they actually become jurors; unless a potential juror has not in any way been influenced by the media in the past decades, s/he will come to the voir dire session already immersed in the pro-Abusenik Stampede point of view.

As for the rarity of miscarriages, we see most recently and so very vividly the result of the Msgr. Lynn case, where a higher court not only reversed the conviction by the jurors but also roundly (and at length and vividly) took the trial judge to task for her long list of very serious failures, all of which worked against the interests and rights of the accused.

In fact, given all of the derangements discussed on this site, I would say that it is hardly improbable that the majority of such criminal cases as there have been where a priest has been found guilty have to be considered with no small amount of skepticism as to their legitimacy. This is what happens when courts – under such pressures as we have often discussed on this site – are more interested in being seen to ‘throw the law-book-at an accused rather than follow-the-law-book. But even here, the law-books themselves have become so deranged that one can now ‘legally’ get away with all of this.

As for the bits about “victims of priests” never even having “had their complaints acknowledged” [correction supplied]: somewhere around 2.7 billion dollars of ‘acknowledgement’ is on record, to say nothing of the media ‘stories’. And as for any invisible but myriad not-yet-reported ‘victims’, we have here nothing more than an un-supported phantasm which may constitute a class of entities only comparable to the medieval angels dancing on the head of a pin.

And as for whether those vast sums constitute “compensation” as well as merely ‘settled-for’ amounts: we have gone over at length and frequently here the problems with trying to assert that the settlement monies constitute per se any proof of the veracity of the allegations.

This is terrible where is their own brother apostles .. were they sleeping?

why doesn't the church defend them from those who wish to make a buck and in effect become the devil's advocate to destroy the priesthood that Jesus himself instituted… There is over 1000 falsely accused priests some of them have been accused of the most ridicules garbage under the sun….

It's got to stop .. This is the persecution of the western world and not many within the church are lifting a finger to stop this persecution .. While we certainly understand that a true victim must be protected in every way so to should be the accused the rights should be the same for ALL….Innocent until proven guilty without any doubts..

Fr John Corapi was falsely accused too and he was thrown under a bus like the rest of our innocent priests… God help our good and holy priest, they are being treated badly because of the few wolves … This is an outrage

Jim Robertson, Are you aware that there have been 316 post-conviction DNA exonerations in the U.S.? But … A jury found them guilty! 18 were sentenced to death before DNA proved their innocence. But … A jury found them guilty! In other news, Mark Shea is reporting that crusader for truth Laurie Goodstein (I can't say it with a straight face) has written that "the gospel of Jesus' wife" is really ancient! In time for Easter, of course. I never read media sources now with any credulity because of the witch hunt most of them have promoted. It's too bad. We're almost like Russia. Can't trust the information shoved at us.

Mary Magdelene's gospel was left out of the new testament. FYI. But it exists. If she was married to J.C. who knows. Frankly I think none of them existed but Paul. Who never mentions jesus as a historical character but saw him as a vision, a super-natural creature. Who would at the end of time fight and beat satan in a "cage match" in space between here and the moon. Seriously it's in the new testament.

Now if that statement is outrageous to you, that's too bad. A wedding between jesus and the magdelene seems tame by comparison to a fight in airless space between the Frick and Frack of good and evil.

I am waiting for the Goodstein, et al claim that Jesus, and his Apostles, were also abusing minors and the Church was created to cover it up. We already have been treated to the bile that they were 'gay', why not take it to the miscreants next 'logical' step?

I am sure there is a 'genuine' parchment out there somewhere that can be interpreted (kabuki, anyone?) as such, by some-

Julie- Ever notice how we never get responses to the salient points, evidence and facts that support exoneration of our innocent priests, but, we're always subject/treated to the atheists' exigesis of our religious texts, dogma or doctrine?

Perhaps it is simple jealousy that drives the bigots, they want to replace our Church's Magisterium with their own.

Many ‘gospels’ were left out of the New Testament, most of them arising out of the Gnostic tradition (from the Greek ‘gnosis’ or ‘knowledge’) which kept trying to emphasize the ‘mystery religion’ aspect of Christianity, i.e. that Jesus imparted ‘special knowledge’ known only to those spiritually-elite favored few who ‘got it’, leaving the rest of humanity among those spiritual mediocrities who ‘just don’t get it’.

Additionally – and this is certainly true of those fragments of the ‘gospel’ of Magdalene that we have (wherein the segments containing the actual contents of her special ‘gnosis’ and vision are missing) – they have a certain soap-opera feel to them, with bits of almost melodramatic scripting in the ‘scenes’.

If we take as a starting-point that the early Church considered Christ’s message as being universal, applicable to all human beings, then it is not hard to see why the various Gnostic ‘gospels’ that began to pop-up were considered to be unfaithful to the substance of Christ’s message and vision: they would have worked toward turning Christianity into a spiritually-elitist cult, excluding most of the rest of humanity.

So then, I think that the best can be said about this and all the Gnostic ‘gospels’ is that they indeed “exist”, in the same way that Billy Doe’s claims and testimony exist: yes, it is all now in the form of an actually existing document, but beyond that one could certainly be within bounds to be very skeptical about the contents of the document.

As for the speculations or ruminations about which Apostles did or did not exist, and the various other bits: they can stay up where they were put.

But I can only agree wholeheartedly with the general applicability and validity of the assertion (the 11th, 1112AM) that “Just because you say [it] does not make your analysis true”. Perhaps that fine bit of intellectual discipline should be written in block-letters on a post-it note and affixed to the top of certain computer screens. Wouldn’t that be nice?

It isn't possible to logically or fruitfully/productively debate one with a mental illness/ disorder. It is worse for a healthy mind to attempt a rational, logical argument/debate with an unhealthy adult then have that same healthy adult attempting to reason with a 3 year old in that the child has the capacity to grow into his/her reasoning ability, eventually. The unhealthy adult's ability to reason is probably irrerievable.

What could be more elitist than the pope and the college of cardinals? 1000 people ruling over 1 and a quarter BILLION people?

I love it when a snob like P pretends he's of and for the people. lol! The word "smarmy" comes to mind. Also the word "types" that P uses so often. Not humans but "types"! Also "abusniks" not raped humans but "icks" . A thing not a person. You disgust me, honestly.

Does anyone still believe that P and D are natural phenomena here? P's obviously a cleric or a cleric groupie and D is a professional s&*t thrower. imho. Their value to the dialog is what?

Why do the few antagonists that visit TMR, an obviously pro-Catholic site, do so?

Is it out of love and compassion that they post their antiCatholic vitriole, hatred and bigotry here?

I am not aware of any TMR commenters visiting antiCatholic or victim-claimant sites to attack, dishonor, abuse or practice hatred or bigotry against them on/at their forums- there is no proof of such despicable behavior.

These antagonists that submit comments at TMR do so for one reason only – to practice and spread their hatred of Catholics. Their submittals have absolutely nothing to do with minor abuse- that issue is used as a ruse – an opening for cowardly bigots to spew their poison under the cover of their dishonestly fabricated 'crisis'.

And, because of that fact, nothing they say has any credibility. Absolutely nothing they submit should be believed – it is tainted with the hue of their well-documented bias.

Hope you don't bring that truckload of pity-party along with you to your high school prom.

I find it ironic that, as your walk down your memory lane/nostalgia 'trip', you find the typical behavior of adult and adolescent homosexual men (largely ephebophiles/pederasts and pedophiles) so distasteful to you – it didn't seem to bother you so much as to derail you from your chosen lifestyle over the past 50+ years, or seemingly affect your deep, deep emotional feelings for your man-crush hero, Harry 'the horse' Hay, friend of NAMBLA.

You wouldn't happen to be operating under a double-standard, now, would you?

Just back from the dinner. They had slides behind the speaker's podium. There were my perpetrators again and again on a loop and only 8 ft. tall. It was so bad i just laughed That's how much the church cares for victims. And of course this was a poor mouth shindig where all they wanted was to raise money and praise sports stars and show off smart students……Some things never change.

2 of my comrades at the table had been wounded in Viet Nam. I had lucked out by being sent to Panama. And in away it was all due. all the good luck. The good parts of my life I could connect directly to that one man, the teacher being honored. Who now looks like Jerry Garcia. I wouldn't have recognized him his voice was diffrent. But when he spoke, his love of knowledge; his pleasure in being a more human being because of art and literature, was like the best. He blazed.

I didn't recognize all but one of my fellow students. There is nothing stranger than time. The campus the buildings looked the same. I sat in front of a door. I walked out of when I was 13 in my first year there in my first school play. The f'ing door looked the same. The buildings the same but we aren't, I'm not. Thank goodness for denial. Mine about my age harms no one. Your denial about your church has harmed many.

But the same unbending control was there of religion. The same ,for lack of better words,facistic overly sentimental control. Everything in highschool was about being controlled save for this teacher .we knew he gave a shit about us as people.He said working class people speak a different language and if you wanted to move up in the class system you'd better talk and think about the things that they do. And it worked. That man gave me my entire life by turning me on to it to literature;art;and great film. I may not spell well but by god i can keep people interested if not amused. I want to thank John McFarland for showing me what to aim for. That's a wonderful gift to give someone. None of the brothers gave us anything. The only one who came close very close became my perpetrator. You wonder why I don't see much good in religion?

We see in the comment of the 12th at 1026AM the plop-toss mentality in action: grabbing a single word, avoid the actual thread of the thought, and riff on it in some way congenial to one’s agenda and predilections.

Thus the ‘elitist’ element in my comment of the 11th at 3PM is applied to the Papacy and the College of Cardinals (through that vague and hardly accurate “ruling over”). Whereas the ‘elitism’ of Gnosticism applied not to any clergy but to the collectivity of Gnostic believers themselves: it was the believers who constituted a spiritual elite, who were convinced they possessed special-knowledge that nobody else had or could have (remarkably similar to the Abuseniks, in a way, is it not?).

And I am a “snob” – oh, my – because I “pretend[s] to be of and for the people” – which is a toss from a rather far left field indeed, since I haven’t gone down that of the people’ road at all (accurate quotations from my material to the contrary could be put up, if they were to exist). However JR does like to style himself as such a tribune of the people, in that 1930s sort of way.

And he doesn’t like the use of “smarmy” – although, nicely, we get a pretty good example of smarm in the comment of the 12th at 1059AM. And my use of the word “types” irritates him, as well it might. And – demonstrating an apparent lacuna in his wide education – he seems to think that the suffix “ik” in ‘Abusenik’ is somehow a neuter usage that – tah dahhhhhh! – makes “humans” (and, of course and inevitably, “raped humans”) into ‘things’. But that suffix is from the Russian, where “ik” simply denotes an individual who is connected-to or exemplifies something: thus ‘Abusenik’ is simply an individual human being (“raped” or otherwise-classifiable) who exemplifies a certain approach to ‘Abuse’. No thing-ifying involved. But it was a nice rhetorical try.

If JR cares to share any reasoning that makes something ‘obvious’ to him, he is welcome to share that reasoning.

And I have discussed before his un-clearness on the concept of “dialog”. A “dialog” is a sustained back-and-forth exploring an subject. With Abusenik types we simply get plop-tossing, and once a particular bit of plop is tossed, then there is no further return to it in light of any objections or discussion, but instead we are simply confronted with more tossing on some different topic; sustained examination or back-and-forth discussion of any particular topic is avoided, and consistently so.

And of course, of what relevance would “cleric” be anyway? It is the ideas themselves that are the key here; but for the Playbook’s plop-tossing, the ideas have to be avoided and whatever possible plop is to be substituted. And might we consider Abuseniks to be ‘rape-groupies’ (however ‘rape’ might be defined)?

As for the comment of the 12th at 1037AM: we can simply leave “unprovable religious fantasies” up there where it was put and move on to the point about there being no “examples” of “’frauds’ against the Church”: we have established more than sufficiently the high-probability of such frauds, and – leaving aside such ‘stories’ as we have had a chance to look at and discuss on this site – there are the various on-going revelations about the Billy-Doe material in Philly that certainly exemplify something other than veracity.

Thus too – and also connecting to the comment of the 12th at 1158 – I would certainly agree that certain types might want to put a second sticky up on their screen with “Thou shalt not bear false witness” in nice big block letters. Yes indeed.

The comment material from the 12th at 1059AM is what it is and largely speaks for itself.

But clearly again we do see that “kindness, the honesty; the compassion” [sic] apparently requires – in Abusenik protocol – the unquestioning acceptance of whatever material is tossed-up onto the screen, regardless of any difficulties that the material might pose. This gambit, as readers who read the Michigan Manual might realize, was erected into a plan and a legal and investigative theory: believe anything and everything that is allegated, no matter how improbable or non-credible or incredible the story may seem; and indeed, the more improbable or non-credible or incredible the story is, the greater the chance that it is true.

As for “people … leaving your church”: the numbers I have seen indicate that Church membership has gone from not quite half a billion in 1950 to 1.2 billion or so today. Would it be snobbish or elitist or not-working-class to observe that the math here clearly indicates an increase and not a decrease? And among those joining the Church must be counted the well-known atheist or anti-theist philosopher Antony Flew (author of, among many other works, the 1950 article “Theology and Falsification” and the books God andPhilosophy and The Presumption of Atheism, who in 2007 published the book There Is A God, subtitled How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind). Readers so inclined may want to read it.

Could it be your church's nonsensical anti birth control policy that helped raise your "numbers". You love people before they are born but after we arrive we are to be controlled and competed against. You are a comedian.

My experience has been that almost all ‘reunion’ dinners thrown by educational institutions have a fund-drive component, and it is usually not very subtle. Emphasizing that component in the 231AM comment as if it were somehow odd or unusual is rather tendentious indeed, but in the Abusenik Playbook you have to toss whatever you can.

In regard to ‘Abusenik’, by the way, I might point to a Russian “ik” word that has become somewhat familiar to Americans: apparatchik, which simply means an individual who is wholly a creature of some “apparat” or organization (in Soviet-era Russian usage, it refers to individuals who were wholly creatures of the government or Party organization and institutions). No thing-ifying to it at all.

Of course, it also might be that photos of old-time faculty members were up there – as they so very often are – just to remind grads of various faculty members of the grads’ school-days at the place. And perhaps the school doesn’t – as it didn’t way back when – consider the particular faculty member(s) as being perps at all. We have seen that before on this site, in documents contemporary with this or that allegation.

So the conclusion to which we are being pointed – “that’s how much the church cares for victims” – is hardly justified by anything we have read here. However I do agree with the comment that “some things never change”. Oh yes indeed.

One wonders perhaps why so outstanding and impressive a teacher as was being honored at the dinner was not back-in-the-day considered somebody who might be approached for advice about … this or that.

The reflections on the passage of time certainly ring familiar notes, common to almost all old grads returning to an educational institution.

If anyone can connect “denial” about “age” with the “denial about your church” as being anything more than a nice rhetorically-balanced phrasing, then good for them.

However we are then taken – rather deliberately – for a stroll on more complicated ground indeed. An “unbending control … of religion” – which apparently was still clear to the commenter more than half a century later. Is the phrase meant to refer to the consistency and consistently-stated presence of a sustained belief and of a sustained religious emphasis? And is that really characterizable as “fascistic” [correction supplied]? Was there, perhaps, a Mass in the evening’s schedule? Or an opening prayer?

The observation about “everything in high school was about being controlled” is hardly unusual, especially when referring to those institutions as they were back half a century and more ago. And it is a truism to point out that high-schoolers usually need a bit of “control” in terms of discipline (especially physically and mentally); the pedagogic idea was to help ground a certain Aristotelian-Augustinian habitualization of good practices and – not to put too fine a point on it – virtues, of both the maturational and the more formally theological kind.

But then but then but then: this teacher apparently passed on – we are told – that 1930s approach about “working class people” who “speak a different language”. Perhaps indeed they do; but truthfulness is certainly a virtue that recognizes no class boundaries, unless one is a committed Socialist or Marxist. Or perhaps we are to presume that the Socialist-Marxist version of Gnosticism applies here: that ‘the workers’ possess a special enlightenment that the bourgeois and upper classes do not and never-can possess … ?

The teacher’s pedagogical accomplishments – as reported here – might well be judged by their result.

Ditto the asserted failure of most of the rest of the faculty (“the brothers” [sic]]), “none of” whom “gave us anything”. Whether this was the fault of the Brothers or simply the consequence of the capacities of particular students is a pedagogical question that is hardly new.

But it is then some sort of conceptual leap to suddenly and immediately drag in the alleged perp as “the only one who came close very close”. Close to what, one might ask.

As for the final rhetorical flourish, I don’t see the need to “wonder” about such a thing at this point.

Since this was my first dinner where a teacher I loved was honored; I did not have the background that P, evidently, has had regarding such dinners. He's probably chaired many such shows.

I expected a little begging for money but not as much as was done there. I lived through it. It bored me to death, It was just like the assemblies they had for us as students in the same room. It was such a complete flashback, but I survived.

Marvelously, and as if to exemplify and confirm my thoughts expressed in earlier comments above on this thread, JR now (the 13th, 1258PM) merely changes the subject to “birth control”, ignoring any points actually made about assertions he had made in prior comments on this thread. Meanwhile, the fact remains that Catholic numbers have more than doubled since 1950.

Why are we supposed to love religion? because it teaches how to love each other and be moral?

I offer up for your consideration, Delphin. Explain Delphin's behavior to me, if you will. How can a Delphin be produced in this best of all possible religions. Has any one else here seen love, compassion, empathy, ever, from this bitter, bitter cluck?

Harry Hay and Rudi Guernrich (Creator of the '60's topless swimsuit for women) founded behind closed and locked doors the first gay organization in the U.S. called Mattachine. A guard was posted at every meeting to look out for cops. Not for doing anything illegal but for just meeting and talking about being gay. Ah the good old days! Blacks couldn't vote and Two (or even more) consenting adults loving each other was a crime. Was that the era you miss the most D?

That's the Harry Hay I was friends with, the revolutionary. Not the Harry Hay, who evidently thought free speech more important than harmed children. That Harry Hay was very wrong, indeed. Delphin you have many child molesting friends and their enablers who you support financialy. I never gave a dime to Harry. Nor have I ever, ever supported Nambla. Bad dog, Delphin, keeps barking up wrong tree. :^)

So twist away Chubby Checker.

Changing the subject, Last night as I just posted my report from my reunion dinner at TMR. I heard a couple of loud pops. I live in a small canyon covered in foliage. I look out side and there was this huge house fire 2 houses away and below me. It burnt to the ground in less than 20 minutes, it was an old 1917 frame house. I guess I was the first on my street to see it. Here in the hills, fire comes. you go. I got to be the Paul Revere waking people in the houses directly above the fire. We all got the garden hoses out. Gratefully no one was hurt. But someone lost a home. FYI.

Delphin What's the need of the mean, as in mean-nasty, hissy fits all the time? You are what they used to call appoplectic with hissiness!

Is perfect goodness really in need of your cheap ass drama to protect it? I wouldn't think so. But there you are sword in hand like Billy Donahue. Ever ready to hack up the opposition. Brava! You are almost Italianate in you musterings of unrequested overindulgent arias. Slow down Aida your fixen to blow a gasket.

What class do you hale from Tex? I doubt if it's the bottom because if it were you wouldn't poo poo class struggle. You'd know exactly what I'm talking about. t

We're kind of enslaved by a concept of freedom that must be bought by wage slaving our way out of poverty. (The middle classes fight to stay out of poverty and the really rich hire people to fight the other two classes so they can stay out of both). Only they've cut the wage slaves wages to next to nothing so you can't get the money to buy your freedom. That generationally is a big difference to the poor but proud American public of the 40's and 50's. who had pensions. No Louis Vuitton for them just Pat Nixon's good old wool coat. Except that's not now; after the crash year 6. More people know what it, this society, looks like from the bottom Come down to the bottom and see. When you look up all you see are other peoples asses and it's potty time.

Not that I've seen any innocent priests accused and then found guilty by juries. There may be innocent priests in jail. If they are innocent then of course they don't belong there but so far you haven't convinced many people that that's true.

It seems to me that you have a perverted sense of God's justice – like He is an executioner demanding innocent blood be spilled. There is no justice outside of Him. You are a theological weirdo. You are like Timothy McVeigh claiming it needs some collateral damage victims to bomb a building. Any sexual abuse of children is wrong, by whoever, you dont exacerbate the evil by destroying the innocent.

Given Thomas' illogic, why not offer yourself up as an 'innocent' to compensate for the nearly 30% of unaccounted non-priests that abuse minors- you know, those "dad's", coaches, scout leaders, rabbis, and all the rest of the typical offending lot?

Give us your contact info- we'll offer you up as we would any 'sacrifice' to God-

On the 13th at 421PM we continue to see the effort to somehow introduce the 1930s idea of “class” into matters under discussion here, since I “poo poo class struggle”. This entire gambit is irrelevant to anything under discussion on this site; and by saying that I do not “poo poo class struggle” per se but simply point out that it has no relevance to matters under consideration here. But it serves as a nifty red-herring distraction from the issues and questions actually arising here.

(Unless, of course, one would want to hold that the Catholic Abuse Matter is somehow an instance of the old 1930’s formulation of “class struggle” – which would serve primarily to indicate the presence of some synergy between i) garden-variety atheist eructations against God and religion (and the Church specifically) and ii) old Marxist and materialist efforts to replace God and religion (and the Church specifically) as the fundamental source of meaning in human life.)

And it gives the commenter a chance to wear another Wig, that of the proletarian tribune (thus perhaps a Wig in the shape of an old Roman helmet, replete with horsehair brush insignia perched on top, rigged either fore-and-aft or athwart).

The rest of the riff in the comment is what it is.

And on the 13th at 341PM we get more ruminations and rumblings about “religion”, although it is slyly stitched-together to platform a dig at ‘Delphin’ – who is not a member of a certain fan-club and therefore, of course, must be all sorts of bad things (including a “bitter, bitter cluck”). And the whole bit is introduced (with uncharacteristic stylistic grace) by the phrase “I offer up for your consideration” – which might set bells ringing among any readers who have ever seen Rod Serling’s old Twilight Zone introductory set-up of that episode’s story.

And then and then and then: “changing the subject”, the comment now informs us that the commenter is not only a tribune of the (working-class) people but – doncha know? – a heroic one at that. Readers may consider this (by amazing coincidence so very convenient) story as they will.

Then the curiously tacked-on riff involving (waittttt for itttttt) Italian opera, which serves only to render even more vivid a certain boffo quality in the whole comment, helmet and horsefeathers and all.

…why not picket the newspaper offices/tv/radio stations? get out there…do something to get these men released, never mind the vengeance…. the media ofcourse would rather not report that a certain element of the clerical abuse story is simply not true….. in Ireland accusations exploded when the govt started offering 'compensation to victims' cash, in other words…. no cash for reporting positive stories about Catholic care centre experiences mind… doesn't mean there wasn't despicable abuse in too many cases, but the media was never interested in balance whenit came to kicking the Catholic church, no way….

The main reason the catholic church is having all the media attention is because of everything they've done, much of which was illegal, to hide the truth of abuse from both the public and the parishiners. My cousins protestant church had an abuser; they went to the police. They did the right thing from the get go. They made it public and therefore were trying to help the injured first. That was the right thing to do. The catholic church with 2000 years of tradition,and with god on their side to boot has consistantly done the wrong things. So now we get the church with a big and probably mostly very good plan to protect the children. I'm all for it. But they have no plan to help the raped. A large percentage of who, had the right things been done by the church , never would have been raped in the first place. That's the problem and the real difference between you and the other religions. Though it looks like the mormans and jeovah's witnesses are in the same, pretend it didn't happen, set of mind like yourselves.

This was bound to happen. The Catholic church let so many guilty priests go free and no prosecutions made to help heal their victims. The guy is just after money, but the path was laid out for him to get it without any problems, "such as the adulterous woman, she eats, and wipes her mouth and says I have done no wickedness." Proverbs 30:20

Perhaps I am being a bit obtuse for those who are responding with the heat of passion. The Catholic Church ordains it's priests as 'priests'.." forever according to the order of Melchizedek". Whereas, there is only one priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek…our Lord Jesus Christ. "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent his Son to be an atonement for our sins."

Incorrect Catholic theology produces all sorts of problems. One of the consequences of ordaining priests' forever according to the order of Melchizedek', is that priests are rarely laicized because they are upheld in a heavenly esteem almost equal to Jesus Christ. They are likewise required to remian celibate as was Jesus Christ.

Thomas' problem is clearly with the Catholic Church and priesthood as theology/doctrine ('Protest' much?) than anything to do with abuse of minors, rampant in the 'reformed' structures (a very, very loose application of that word).

We are informed (the 14th, 435PM) that the “main reason” that the Church has received so much media attention is “because of everything they’ve done, much of which was illegal, to hide the truth of abuse from both the public and the parishioners”[correction supplied].

This presumes a) that the “truth of abuse” is substantively and substantially what the Abusenik scare-visions claim it is; and that b) the Church has “hidden” that “truth”; and that c) “much” of what the Church did to ‘hide’ the ‘truth’ was “illegal” – and that’s a lot of presumption to toss up without any substantiation, especially in light of the large quantity of material that’s been discussed at length on this site establishing the high probability of the contrary.

Thus too the further assertion fails: that the Church “has consistently done the wrong things” [correction supplied], which assertion can only succeed if all of the presumptions (a) through (c) are accurate.

Then, however, we get the even more questionable bit that x) although the Church’s “big and probably mostly very good plan to protect the children” exists – yet y) “they have no plan to help the raped”.

This trope that we see in (y) is merely the same old 3×5 card tossed up again.

Because d) even JR has acknowledged that there is probably nothing more the Church can do to “help” and we have considered at some length the various problems inherent in the Church trying to provide that help (whatever such “help” might be beyond the cash); and because e) that 2.7 billion spread over somewhere between 6 and 13 thousand allegants is a hefty bit of “help” itself; and because f) nobody has yet come up with a way to distinguish the genuinely (or, if you wish, “truly”) ‘raped’ from those otherwise classifiable; and because g) at this point it is very much an open question just how many more un-reported (and genuinely) “raped” remain out there. (Nor has any Abusenik here (or anywhere else that I’ve seen) ever tried to answer or offer a workable and effective solution to the question of how to distinguish the genuine from the otherwise-classifiable.)

But it’s nice to see that the post-2002 Plan – as subsequently refined and improved – passes muster.

Then the Church is put into the sly logical bind of being responsible for re-writing history: i.e. that as long as the Church cannot go back and right such wrongs as were genuinely and actually committed decades ago, then it cannot apparently “help”. On the basis of this logic, the Ball can be Kept Rolling forever.

And again: while the general idea of there being some crimes (though few of them rising to ‘rape’ even in the record of formally-lodged allegations) can surely and reasonably be assumed to be true, yet the extent of the genuine and actual wrongs remains in serious question.

But then the last bit about “other religions” having done things right certainly requires some substantiation, especially as the global assertion which is made in this bit. And my point is then reinforced by the equally off-balance assertion that at least two of those “other religions” – the Mormons and the Jehovah’s Witnesses – have also done things wrong.

And the final bits of attempted wrap-up snark fail for all the reasons above.

But this 14th-435PM comment also prompts this general thought about internet commenting:

There are several types of assertion possible: i) a general assertion the validity of which may reasonably be presumed to be accessible to the experiences of any general reader. For example, ‘rain is wet’.

Then there is ii) an assertion that might be within the general experience of readers but might need specifically supporting material. For example, ‘rain is wet, but there are different degrees of wetness , as meteorological science tells us’.

But then there is iii) an assertion so specific to the commenting-individual’s personal experience that – absent some credibly acceptable corroborating source – there is utterly no way internet readers can definitively gauge its validity, accuracy, and credibility. For example, ‘I was caught in a rainstorm that was so wet that it soaked through the most-advanced water-repellent material ever made, which I just happened to be wearing at the time’ (which problem is then exacerbated if one then also attaches to that assertion further assertions as to the ‘harm’ and ‘damage’ that such failure of the water-repellent material has caused to the story-teller personally).

You see the problem here.

Further, the shrewdness of the Anderson Strategies was to base everything almost entirely in category-iii assertions while – through the synergistic help of a collusive media – making those category-iii assertions appear to be category-i assertions or – at least – category-ii assertions.

Prove it. P. Prove your assertions. Prove your thesis true. Give us examples and lots of examples; since you claim fraud rampant in our suits and claims against the church

You give us only possibilities of how things might have happened but never proof, never any proof, that they did happen the way you say. Put up or shut up. Your musings are not very interesting. They are repugnant. Spell this correctly if you will, S H U T U P.

In his ‘Freelance’ column for the Times Literary Supplement of March 21, 2008 (page 16), Michael Greenberg wrote about a phenomenon that is of no small relevance to what we are dealing with on this site.

News has just come to him in the UK about a Belgian woman living in Massachusetts who had in 1997 published a memoir of her experiences in the Holocaust (entitled Misha: A memoir of the Holocaust years). It was highly recommended by major Holocaust-advocacy figures; and a film based on it had been released in France in 2008, entitled Survivre avec les loups (‘To survive among the wolves’).

The book and film told the autobiographical story of 7-year old Misha Defonseca, who made a trek from Brussels to the Ukraine in search of her deported Jewish parents, managing along the way to stop in at the Warsaw Ghetto (she got out by scaling the wall), stabbed and killed a Nazi who tried to rape her, and “is protected in her journey through the forests by packs of wolves”.

Kindly take a moment to review the highlights of this remarkable story once more. One notes the amazing aggregation of so-very-highly topical and heart-tugging yet inspiring bits: a child, Jewish, in the Holocaust years of WW2, pluckily trekking across a vast swath of wartime (and Nazi Occupied) Europe, the attempted rape, the even more plucky killing of the attempted rapist (and a Nazi to boot), and – marvelously – the adoption and defense by assorted packs of wolves (who apparently handed her on from one territory to the next, perhaps like Resistance cells famously used to pass downed Allied aircrews along a chain of cells until they could get back to Blighty).

Some readers at the time pointed out as a simple matter of historical fact that her parents were supposed to have been taken away in the spring of 1940, but that date was a full 17 months before the deportations of Belgian Jews began; they were immediately and roundly abused (if I may) as “Holocaust deniers”. The director of the film, one Vera Belmont, accused such question-raisers “of being ‘exactly like people who doubt the existence of concentration camps … everything that happened in the Holocaust is unbelievable and impossible to grasp’”.

Perhaps you have guessed it: Little Misha’s real name was Monique De Wael, she was not Jewish, and she then confessed that she had made the whole thing up.

And perhaps readers here will not be surprised at the post-confession comments of Misha-Monique’s supporters (or ‘enablers’, if you wish): Vera Belmont insisted that “No matter if it’s true or not, it’s a beautiful story”. Misha-Monique “blamed her publisher for talking her into putting out the book” (sort of the role a tortie would play in another context; and I note that whatever the publisher did, it was Misha-Monique who had gone and made the whole thing up and put it in writing in the first place). Said Misha-Monique: “She [i.e. the publisher] made me believe and I believed it”.

Misha-Monique continued: “The story of Misha is not actual reality, but my reality, my way of surviving”. (Does this sound at all familiar?)

And she then went on to ‘confess’ that actually her parents were Belgian Resistance fighters who were killed by the Nazis. One wonders: to be a child and have your parents be Resistance fighters killed by the Nazis was surely enough of an experience for a memoir itself (if, of course, it were true) – so why go and create the confabulation about the Warsaw Ghetto, the attempted rape, and the wolves instead?

And, Misha-Monique continued, “I always felt Jewish, always created a different life for myself, a life far from the people I hated”. This is actually far more revelatory than she perhaps intended: whom, exactly, had she “hated” so much so that she created a distance from them: the Nazis, the Belgians, her parents (whom in her story she killed-off rather quickly)? The clinical possibilities are not unremarkable.

Greenberg then goes on to note that on March 4th, the day after the confession, the New York Times “revealed another case of what Daniel Mendelsohn calls the ‘plagiarism of other people’s trauma’”: this time a memoir by one Margaret B. Jones entitled Love and Consequences, wherein the story’s heroine “presents herself” as half-Native American and half-Caucasian foster child “who with her possessions in a rubbish bag” was shuffled around until in her eighth year she was taken in by a black family presided over by a woman named “Big Mom” (one thinks of “Big Daddy” and “Big Momma” from Tennessee Williams’s Cat On A Hot Tin Roof) in South Central LA during the worst of the early-‘80s gang war years.

Says Greenberg: “As with De Wael’s fabrication, I was struck by the wealth of detail enveloping the author’s soul-destroying childhood years” (to which I opine: and she didn’t even have the relevant equivalent of the Bishop-Accountability website data base for handy reference).

Reviewers of the Jones story had gushed and gone gaga over “the bonds of love and loyalty” in the story; they “praised its ‘heart-tingling’ qualities, its tenderness, its lyricism and ‘nurturer’s point of view’”. We see here the enabling and supporting role to be played by supposedly objective mainstream reviewers when the ‘story’ is plumping stuff that they too want to believe – and want everybody else to believe.

Greenberg notes that when ‘Margaret Jones’ was “confronted with the fact that she was really Margaret Seltzer, who grew up in a well-to-do suburb and attended a private Episcopal day school, she continued, like De Wael, to express her belief in the righteousness of her fantasy self”. And – I would add – the putative righteousness of her confabulation.

But I would say that while these two story-fabricators merely a) made it all up and then b) made some money off their (rather deceptive) fantasies, they did not then c) go out and get an attorney and make allegations that could rake in bucks by taking the whole show into the legal forum.

Which legal forum – in this country certainly – was already being ‘re-modeled’ by its erstwhile legislative and jurisprudential guardians to make the story-tellers’ task ever so much easier and more rewarding. Compared to them, the publishers and reviewers and media-types play a distinctly second-fiddle.

So we can see yet again the brilliance of the Anderson Strategies in realizing how fundamentally and vitally valuable certain streams of literary and cultural development (or derangement) would be for their success: with i) the increasing fuzziness of the distinction between actuality and fantasy (or ‘story’), and ii) the increasing erosion of the concept of objective truthfulness, and iii) the concomitant valorization of the revolutionary theory that in the service of the ‘Cause’ untruthfulness may well not only be acceptable but even necessary and thus iv) those who create such stories in the service of the ‘Cause’ are actually (revolutionary) ‘heroes’ … with all these streams cresting toward a flood, and with legislators and jurists eagerly ‘reforming’ traditional firewalls out of the way and with media eager for such ‘stories’ as if they were actual factual news, then the possibilities of getting a Stampede going were also cresting to a flood.

That was the way it was in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and it was given a huge boost in 2002 when it became possible to have a legal go at the Bishops and Dioceses and Insurers, and not just the poor church-mouse individual accused priests. And it was Tally-Ho from then on. Until maybe now.

Jeff Anderson and brilliance in the same sentence? Maybe there are miracles after all. Jeff Anderson is an also ran in the smart race. Trust me I've stood next to him too many times to be mistaken about this. Brilliant is fr. Tom Doyle. Now there's a brain but of course since Machiavelli The church has figured out if you set up various committees like SNAP and VOTF etc. etc. and keep saying they are who they say they are. They can fool anyone and everyone. Everyone except the few of us activist victims who know blag opp, false flagged efforts when we see them. Victims aren't a "strategy" created by Jeff Anderson. We were created by our rapes. Jeff Anderson is ancillary to those rapes. Jeff needs us. We don't need him.

This is in response to my namesake's response to my first post on this thread. Would the other Mark include in the indivduals Susan Matthews who keeps the blog Catholics 4 Change and disagrees with a lot of what Dave Pierre says? How about Chrssie Foster, a Melbourne (Aust) mum whose daughters were raped by a priest and has been campaining for the Church to take accountablity since? That is understandable and commendable of course but I have never known her to speak out for falsely accused priests. Then there's Regina Lane who fought an entirely different battle with the Church. It was to preserve a Church building which was going on the market. She writes of this battle in her book Saving St. Brigids about which, more here: http://savingstbrigids.com.au/

Now I have only taken a quick look at the book; I haven't read it from cover to cover but I can't see anything there about falsely accused priests, only children abused by priests and re-absued by the Church bishops.

Sadly, I believe what Diana says is true. If only the Church had not swept the crisis under the carpet, we wouldn't have innocent priests going to jail.

In regard to ‘Mark-A’s comment (the 16th, 8AM), I cannot completely agree.

I think it needs to be kept in mind that the Catholic Abuse Crisis is not simply defined by the SNAP-type (and media-amplified) narrative: i.e. that untold numbers of children were abused by numerous Catholic clerics over decades (if not centuries) and things only ballooned into the Abuse Crisis because of the Bishops’ or the Church’s attempt to cover-up and “if only the Church had not swept the crisis under the carpet, we wouldn’t have innocent priests going to jail”.

First, from the developments in the legal field, we must take into account that so-called ‘victim-friendly’ law ‘reforms’ (by which law and jurispraxis are changed in such a way as to weaken the position of the accused and strengthen the position of the accuser) that have been underway since the 1960s. And this was true in the civil as well as criminal arena. And the weakening of evidentiary principles and even the very basic weighting of legal status against any accused were very necessary consequences of that .

Second, this same ‘victim-centered’ dynamic had become a substantial and attractive approach for much of the media, going back to the 1970s (think of plucky housewives taking on large corporations for this or that, as we saw in more than one film script) and by the 1980s had become a rather accepted and almost omnipresent theme in the news. This worked to make any accusation made against anybody – especially in certain areas of life – somewhat ‘presumptively credible’ before any legal process even began.

Third, as a consequence of certain elements of an ever-intensifying feminist influence in politics and law and in-general, matters of sex were especially raised to high-levels of national social attention.

Fourth, the Church – in its consistently and strongly-held positions on matters such as marriage, abortion, homosexuality, and so forth – had proven herself a stumbling-block to numerous ‘liberal’ or ‘elite’ reform agendas.

Fifth – and I think Doyle realized this when he and his associates (a psychologist and a tort-attorney) submitted his ideas to the US Bishops in 1985 – it was becoming increasingly possible to cast the Church as one of the victimizing and arrogant ‘corporations’ (from the 1970s theme) that was also ‘patriarchal and oppressive’ (the ‘liberal’ and feminist theme) and to do so now (i.e. by the mid-1980s) not only in the media and moral forum, but also in the legal forum (especially lawsuits in the civil forum).

Thus we saw individual priests accused and in some cases put on trial as early as the early 1980s (also the era of the McMartin Pre-School Day-Care Satanic Ritual Abuse trials, which yielded what remains as longest and most expensive public trial in US history).

But Doyle (and surely the tort-attorney on his team) saw the vast potentials for attorneys and claimants/allegants in all of this. Specifically, under the civil corporate-law expansion of the concept of Respondeat Superior, it had become since the early 1970s increasingly easier to sue a corporation on the basis of a wrong-doing (or ‘tort’) claim against any of its employees. A simple attorney-assessment of the potential ‘deep-pockets’ of the Church as the target of such lawsuits – which has always been a key factor in determining the viability of lawsuits – quickly revealed the possibility of vast potential sums vulnerable to such tactics.

Thus in January 2002 – as well-documented in D’Antonio’s book which we considered at length here some time ago – the Boston Globe (for its own purposes) took the Anderson Strategies to an entirely new level by seeking to ‘sue the Bishops’ (and not just the poor-as-churchmice individual accused priests). That development has since further expanded into criminal as well as civil legal strategies (as we saw in the recent Philadelphia cases, among others and now targets Bishops as well as accused priests).

All of these large factors were and are active in the Catholic Abuse Matter, and have to be factored into any assessment of what is driving it. As I said in comments a while back, there is definitely an aspect of the whole thing – and not a small factor – that requires us to look at the Catholic Abuse Matter as a species of ‘disability fraud’ lawsuit (which, as I also mentioned, Manhattan is now prosecuting criminally in the matter of firefighter and police false disability claims, revealing some of the dynamics of how such scams are arranged and perpetrated – which dynamics bear an uncomfortably close resemblance to the tortie/front-organization dynamics of the SNAP/Anderson/Tortie axis arrangement).

And thus I have been working on this aspect of the Matter in my own comments, because I don’t think it is sufficiently taken into consideration in the general approach to the Matter. (Which is not at all to deny that some priests committed rationally-definable acts of child sex abuse, among which are included – although the number is not large – outright and classically-defined child-rape.)

But as I have said in prior comments: while it is not difficult to agree with the general theoretical concept that some priests committed such acts, and some few of those acts rose to the most serious moral and criminal levels, yet it is another thing altogether to actually establish with reasonable certainty the actual reality of such perpetrations in any specific case.

This is due to the extremely difficult matter of trying to establish guilt in the absence of sufficiently credible corroborative evidence in this type of ‘sex’ case. And the ‘victim-friendly’ solution – as I have said before – to that fundamental problem has been to legally weaken the evidentiary principles and ancillary jurispraxial procedures in such a way that it must now always be considered a substantial possibility that the guilt of the accused is now imposed rather than established.

And it is also precisely as a result of all this that we see so often the trope of mere ‘belief’, i.e. that one cannot be deterred by a lack of actual evidence but instead must base public opinion and legal procedure merely on the fact that one simply ‘believes’ the accuser (even though this regresses legal praxis and principle back to the medieval era of ‘spectral evidence’, whereby only the accuser – and not even the jury or judge – can ‘see’ the proof of the accuser’s claims).

And it was the brilliance of the Anderson Strategies that they took all of these dynamics into account in order to shape a legal strategy whose deployment by Anderson or other torties has now raked in and racked up 2.7 billion dollars in settlements (little of that money resulting from a judge or jury-declared ‘award’) and fees and expenses and so forth.

And, another domino falls (voila! yet, another falsely accused priest vindicated) in the crooked line of ill-conceived dominos constructed by the antiCatholic bigots these past decades. SNAP and their brother bands of merry marauders must be wrestless and fearful of losing their sure-footing along their paths to their earthly rewards.

A peaceful and contented thought for the faithful these holiest of days.

In regard to the material of the 16th at 1043AM, I say yet again: In matters of a) spectral evidence that b) appears on the internet, third-parties (readers, jurors) are reduced to a matter of probability rather than proof. And this is especially so when just about all of the material that needs to be examined has already been placed behind a wall of secrecy demanded by the torties and the story-tellers as part of the settlement agreement, thus effectively sealing-off the stories from becoming “examples” of false – or at least non-credible or incredible – allegations.

I have established the high-probabilities of non-veracious stories and I have demonstrated the type of questioning that needs to be practiced in regard to them.

Thus I do not give “only possibilities” –I have established probabilities, which are not the same as “possibilities”; but those probabilities are rather significant. Until such a time might arise when the original allegations materials are opened to the public, then probabilities are the best anybody can do.

For any allegant to demand “proof” and “examples” when the allegants’ own torties have effectively sealed-off any and all material that could constitute such “proof” and “examples” is the equivalent of somebody who has murdered his parents telling the court that it would have to ask his parents if he had any grudges against them.

And none of what I have written so far in this comment is new since all this ground has been covered before.

Then on the 16th at 344PM we get nothing but snark about Jeff Anderson, whose demonstrated efforts – now a part of the historical record – in his chosen projects have resulted in a very great deal of success indeed. Weighed against that irrefutable and undeniable reality, any contrary assertions grounded in nothing more than the insistence that we merely “trust” the commenter seem rather weightless.

Then a mere repetition of the 3x5s about the Church setting up SNAP and other organization – all of which has been dealt with before, and with no subsequent counter-demonstrations or rational answers to the problems with that theory ever having been put forward.

What some self-proclaimed “activist victims” claim to see (and only they can see it, while “anyone and everyone” else cannot see it – which is as fine a working example of ‘spectral evidence’ and the ‘Gnostic’ dynamic as one is likely to encounter) is there for any reader to judge for him/herself.

But the reality remains that Jeff Anderson’s Strategies have amassed somewhere around 2.7 billion dollars worth of success, while said self-proclaimed “activist victims” have accomplished … not so very much at all in comparison, whether one measures in terms of dollar-amounts or alternative organizations set-up or in terms of any other measure of ‘success’.

Where have I ever said that “victims” were “a ‘strategy’”? The Anderson Strategies were the strategy, and they have succeeded in their objectives of garnerning settlement-cash for the allegants and huge amounts of fees for the torties themselves. Nor have any such “victims”, with a miniscule number of exceptions, indicated that they are dissatisfied with the outcome of their – and Anderson’s or any other tortie’s – efforts.

Thus the complete circularity of the argument here (the “rapes” created the “victims”, and the “victims” are proven to be authentic because of the “rapes”) fails utterly to demonstrate or establish anything actual at all. We simply wind up in a carnival midway hall of mirrors, and a circular one at that.

And “rapes” constitute one of the smallest categories in the list of formally-lodged allegations. Unless we want to extend the definition of “rape” like play-dough to include just about anything.

Jeff Anderson may indeed be “ancillary to those rapes” (‘subsequent’ might be a better choice of words than ‘ancillary’ here) but the formal allegants have split 2.7 billion (minus the fees and expenses for the torties) and so I would say that “victims” had a great need for Anderson or at least his Strategies: if they didn’t have him they would have had to invent him.

And, lastly, we must consider just how many ‘victims’ (genuine or otherwise-classifiable) are included in that global assertion that “we [victims] don’t need him”. Because it appears as if Anderson was vitally necessary and greatly needed, since he (and his Strategies) delivered the goodies in amounts nobody might have imagined before those Strategies came into effect. And nobody else and nobody else’s carefully-designed work has produced anything more amazing and more successful by any measure.

Or is there any number of known payees who rejected their settlement check because money wasn’t why they went to a tortie and put-forward their story or stories?

You right somebody invented Jeff Anderson; and that somebody was the church through SNAP. SNAP rounded us victims up and Jeff was there heralded, by the media, as the go to lawyer for victims no other name lawyer has appeared on the scene in 30 odd years. How likely is that in an overabundent legal market place where you can't walk out the door without bumping into a lawyer. I've got two on my rather small street. A fellow victim said we should have united as a group and had lawyers bid to represent us. Believe me we wouldn't have had to pay out 40% of our settlements if we had done that. One lawyer here , Art Goldberg , who himself had been a major player in the Berkley Free Speech movement in the 60's, charged his clients 25%.

Do you know the amounts juries awarded victims who were within the age limit of the statutes? 3, 4 5, million dollars per case. As example there was a young man here who was masturbated and given oral sex by his priest perpetrator. He sued within the statutes of limitations. The jury awarded him 5 million dollars. A far cry from the $12,000 offered me by the marianists when I first notified them, the order's leaders, in the 90's.

You think 2 and 3/4 billion dollars a lot of money? If you had had to go to trial on all the cases you've settled; you'd be surprised at how cheaply you've gotten off with that figure you call large.

You don't want to pay out these sums? Don't rape kids and don't cover up when you find children have been raped.

If the adults I told in school 51 years ago had called the police and my parents much could have been done for all concerned. But they didn't. Suppose I was lying about my abuse because I was failing chemistry. That would have been found out too. I was such a non-lying kid that I, unlike a lot of others, would confess my sins of masturbation in confession. My father was very big, very big on honesty. He equated it with honor and I loved him for that. Oh, I was raped all right.

You act like compensation is somehow dirty or immoral. Why?

Of course if your house burned down; or your car was totaled in an accident; or your child or self as a child were raped by a U.S. senator, The fire marshall at school, or even a priest, let's say. You would seek compensation. Wouldn't you?

The nonsensical idea that there is a large crowd of fake victims; fooling both church and insuror into paying them money because they are such good liars? Is laughable. (if it wasn't such an evil construct).

Have fakes tried to get through and beat the system? Maybe. I don't know. I do know; I haven't met any in my 12 years experience with the subject.

The mere fact that you have next to no examples of fraudulent claims being real, says a lot. imo.

If you added up your proven fake claim payouts; and your proven, wrongly incarcerated clerics. The sum would be 0.

And, while we fiddle-away on the minor abuse crisis that isn't in the Catholic Church, there appears to be a real problem (minor abuse sex ring, cover-ups) in Hollywood/LA, land of the leftist hypocrites. You know, those 'types' that attack the Church, our Pope and faithful Catholics, everywhere.

This one has all the ingredients of your typical, filthy entertainment industry 'thriller'-

Hollywood didn't create and fund a special care unit to send child molesting directors to other studios with a "cleared" resume to rape again like the holy Roman catholic church did.

Your church had "treatment' centers, at least 4 of them, placed all over the country. Lefty Hollywood never had that. And if Hollywood and LA are so left ; How come Micharel Moore was booed off the stage when he mentioned Bush's illegal invasion of Iraq; when accepting an Oscar, by the stage crew?

Remember your two Gods, Ronnie Raygun and John Wayne came from Hollywood.

Jim – Where in all of your comments here is there one statement on the article TMR posted. you use this site as your own bloggin station. why not put your time to better use and take your catholic hating childish rants elsewhere.

On the 17th at 1028AM we simply get yet again another repetition of the 3×5 insistence that it was the Church that “invented” Jeff Anderson. This still-undemonstrated and ungrounded assertion, for which no coherent rational theory to support it has yet been forthcoming, is introduced by means of – yet again – a quickie riff on the word “invent”. If there is any evidence – or even any rationally probable theory – as to how the Church could not only be in cahoots with Anderson but actually had ‘invented’ him, then we would need to see it put up here. Wouldn’t that be interesting?

There are numerous other lawyers around the country who have “appeared on the scene in the last 30 years”; D’Antonio, in his section on the events leading up to the Boston Globe shenanigans prior to launching of the January-2002 phase of the Matter, discusses the role of the local Anderson-Strategy tortie there at length. Thus the sense of next sentence’s question (beginning “How likely is that …”) fails at the outset. Nor was Jeff Anderson was the attorney of record for the monster 2006 LA settlement for the 500-plus allegants either.

Then the marvelous remark about a conversation with a “fellow victim” to the effect that “we should have united as a group and had lawyers bid to represent us”. Of course, they all did go to a tort attorney, did they not – the comment-maker included? And the bit about their imagining themselves trying to create a bidding-war for themselves among tort-attorneys is simply too splendidly revelatory not to notice: lawsuits (on the basis of allegedly life-wrecking trauma) calculatedly put on the market for the highest bidder (as if torties could legally promise a certain result) or the lowest-fee bidder (which also raises the fatuous thought that torties would or could take less than their cut).

And – as if on cue – we are adjured to “believe me” yet again, this time in regard to the cockamamie vision that had these “victims” done their horse-trading, then they would have avoided the 40-percent tortie fees. (It is about the money, isn’t it?)

Alas, poor torties just get no respect at all: here they go to all the trouble of hooking up the allegants on a successful surf-ride to big-bucks, and they are simply abused for being greedy profiteers off of others’ life-wrecking trauma … after the checks had been cashed, of course.

Then – apparently as ‘evidence’ – we are simply given anecdotes which, for all we know, may be mere constructions or phantasms. What jury cases, I would ask; could we get the name of a Party or a docket-number and the particular court involved? Or at least a news article (with its link or identifying bits)?

As for being offered 12 thousand dollars by the Marianists back in the 1990s: it would be helpful to know if the Marianists (and no doubt their Counsel and Insurers) had come to the considered conclusion that the story was of such a level of credibility as to only warrant that much. Without such information it is utterly unjustified to characterize (overtly or by implication) the Marianists as tightwads or insensitive; perhaps they were simply judging the quality of the material presented to them.

But in any case, the brilliance and efficacy of the Anderson Strategies is clearly demonstrated by the actual subsequent historical record: when the Stampede was factored in, and the ‘bundled lawsuit’ tactic, in the mid-2000s, the same story – now even further removed in time – netted its teller a million (minus, of course, the outrageous tortie-take). The horror.

And apparently we are a bit off to think that 2.7 billion dollars is “a lot of money”. But then but then but then but then but then: JR goes and makes precisely the point I have been making for quite some time in regard to the shrewd brilliance of the ‘bundled lawsuit’ tactic: it would have cost far more to defend at trial against each Plaintiff (and/or each allegation) than to settle out of court. The benefit to the allegants and torties being that in an out-of-court settlement, the ‘stories’ would not be subjected to the possible public exposure that the Billy-Doe story (or stories) now receive in Philadelphia – nor, once the secrecy clause was demanded by the torties, could those ‘stories’ ever be subjected to any actual analysis at all. So very very neat.

As for the “rape” and “cover-up”, we really don’t know, do we? And given the points I just made in the immediately preceding paragraph above, we probably never will.

And I would also add – in light of the response comment I made today in regard to the ‘Mark-A’ comment, that this ‘cover-up’ trope is a well-known element in the scripting of those 1970s ‘corporate depredation’ movies: evil corporation does nasty things, victimizes many many, and then covers-up. That was the script, as some readers may recall from back in the day.

I was under the clear impression that no adults had been told (have we not been previously informed that back then one simply was too embarrassed to reveal such embarrassing things?) “51 years ago”. And not that paragon lay teacher either. But for the purposes of discussion, let us consider what might have happened if the police had been called: it is hardly beyond the realm of possibility that the police would have asked some (or even more acute versions of) the questions that were posed to the story in comments on this site and that, consequently, the police would have had an even more acute version of the response that we saw here: this doesn’t quite make the sense it needs to make. Of course, the police back then had not been trained in the type of stuff we read in the Michigan Manual.

And how we get to the conclusion “Oh, I was raped all right” from the material in the sentences immediately preceding it is a process whose logical coherence is at best elusive.

In response to the question “Why?” posed to me, I would answer: I consider ‘compensation’ obtained under false pretexts to be most certainly “dirty or immoral”. Is that point hard to grasp?

Then – and yet again – the sly but failed effort to compare a) the ‘damage’ of the alleged (and only ‘spectrally-evidenced’) abuse with b) having one’s car wrecked in an MVA. And again I point out: in the MVA scenario we have a clearly wrecked car with a witnessed MVA; in the assorted proffered abuse scenarios we have no such corroborating evidence. (And of course: a good insurance investigator would then look to distinguish between a car already-damaged or purposely damaged by its owner who then falsely claimed it had been in an MVA or a car deliberately or through the negligence of its owner involved in an actual MVA, as opposed to a car ‘honestly’ – as it were – involved in an MVA.

And I would also then ask: if somebody cooked-up a false accusation against you, and stood to cost you a huge bundle, then you’d try to determine the veracity of that accusation, wouldn’t you?

If there is any grounds for considering the “idea that there is a large crowd of fake victims” to be “nonsensical”, I will simply say that in all the time and pixels spent on the point on this site, I have not seen any substantial and coherent explanation of why that idea would be “nonsensical”. The word hangs here as nothing more than an epithetical toss-off.

And then the commenter immediately goes on to undermine himself on precisely this point: he says “Maybe”. Then he says “I don’t know”. Then he says “I do know”. Readers are invited to go figure.

But then the commenter merely gives us a further anecdotal bit: he hasn’t “met any in my 12 years experience with the subject”. Ooooh, sounds professional and competent. Until one asks: just how would one go about determining if this or that, let alone every, specific case were “fakes” or not? If one has conducted that assessment of each and every case one has encountered, then what methodology was used to effect the conclusion of genuineness? If one has not conducted such assessments, then on what basis and of what actual value is the bit about not having “met any”?

The mere fact that we are faced here with such a mishmash says a lot, imo.

The concluding math problem can stay up where it was put for the amusement of the readers.

On the 17th at 1047AM we are – in a stunningly marvelous performance – given a splendid example of lack of self-awareness. Which commenter is the offensive problem here?

Then on the 17th at 1057 we – yet again – revisit the Church’s facilities for troubled and dysfunctional priests: I had said in comments a while back that the Church was ahead of just about every other corporate and government institution in the country in setting-up special facilities, staffed by competent professionals trained in the best-practices of the era, to help variously-dysfunctional priests.

The Abuseniks have taken this inconvenient historical reality and tried to turn it into a negative by insisting that these facilities functioned simply as hide-outs or some such for the (allegedly) ravenous child abusers. And I would be surprised if there were only four such facilities but let that number stand for purposes of the discussion here.

I have no idea who considers Ronald Reagan and John Wayne to be “your two Gods” (curiously and very uncharacteristically capitalized here) – but that they “came from Hollywood” is surely nothing more than a riff. They “came from” Illinois and Iowa, respectively. And if they also came from the era of the studio system, of what relevance might that be?

But it’s true indeed that in addition to the Church being ahead of corporations and government agencies in the setting-up of treatment facilities, it must also be added that the Church was well ahead of Hollywood in the studio-era or any time before or since that era.

Harry Hay and Harvey Milk, examples of only two 'gay' icons, out of many, supportive of man-boy 'love', would never persecute the homosexuality expressed in the Church throughout the 70s and 80s since it aligned with their 'sexosophy and sexigion'.

And, clearly, there is huge support for the Hollywood 'child' casting couch throughout 'gaydom', because as we all have been 'taught', if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem, and I dont hear or see any of them screaming for any of those studio or production company heads, or boycotting the works of 'art' produced by these pedophiles. So, Hollywood is certainly not part of the solution; and it is certainly homocentric and homophilic.

I'd have call these facts indisputable evidence of a double standard. The only logical reason for this double standard is anti-Catholic bigotry.

God help us all; and these poor young boys in Hollywood. Every output of this disgusting industry that you purchase supports their demonic actions. No matter where these deviants reside, we witness the same evil outcomes.

If Amy Berg, whose home I've been to, is doing a doc on pedo's in Hollywood more power to her. She's extremely talented. Her film featuring a priest who raped children from the age of 6 months up should have won the Oscar for best documentary. (It was beaten by Al Gore's doc on global climate change).

However, I just wonder who might be financing a documentary that you are so eager to champion,sight unseen, Delphin. Could it be mother church? Let's get "Hollywood" in the news (weather truthfully or not) and get the church's outrageous behavior towards it's own children out of the spotlight.

The two aren't comparable at all but I can tell Delphin's ready to run with this ball; so, you go girl.

Hollywood still doesn't meet the church's "pass 'em on" rate at all. But let us see what we shall see. It couldn't be a high priced p.r. firm hired by the church has come up with a plan of water muddying and mis-direction, could it?

Just look at how the conspiracy theory is spun to suggest who might be financing the latest Berg investigation? Why it's the Catholic Church- of course, we should all have seen that one coming! When they're not running SNAP, VOTF B-A, C4C, etc. inteference, they're making documentaries designed to skewer themselves- makes perfect [non]sense.

An observer might think, with 'one' having 'been to the home' and all, that 'one' might know these answers since 'one' is such a Hollywood Insider 'wannabe'. Is it possible to discuss or debate a TMR comment, or any sane, normal commenters submissions without having to constantly bear the emotionally-psychologically challenged 'selfies' constantly posted by this 'one'?

In regard to the 17th at 1011PM: Wayne was born in Iowa and spent his early formative years there. I can’t see the relevance of the idea that Reagan would have been an unknown if not for his Hollywood career.

In regard to the 17th at 1015PM: One sees the usual Playbook tactic when faced with lots of uncongenial and inconvenient facts: just flick it all away with the epithetical claim that it’s all just “a smoke screen of words” and then, for frosting on the cake, that the “smoke screen” is merely there to “hide the truth”. By that “truth” we can only legitimately infer the commenter’s own personal truth, not necessarily connected to any more objective actuality. (See my comment on this thread about the fake memoirs.)

But the “smoke screen of words” to “hide the truth” rings a bell, nicely, with a situation that has developed in regard to a first-term US Senator. [Note: I am about to discuss a particular current political personage; in doing so I am not at all interested in the person’s politics nor will I be drawn into any political musings on this site. My purpose here is simply to discuss what I would say is an excellent example of deploying the Victimist Playbook in order to avoid un-congenial reality.]

One Elizabeth Waren (D – MA) of the US Senate has issued a memoir/autobiography. In it she attempts to deal with the apparently resilient and sustainable claims that she consistently and untruthfully described herself as ‘Native American’ (Cherokee tribe)in order to smooth her path to success in education and employment. Apparently no tribal records include her or her family; her work and education documentation (where it would quickly become clear whether she did or did not identify herself as Native American) has suddenly disappeared or been put behind a secrecy wall, nor is she willing to do anything to find or release any documentation.

Now to my point: How does she handle this problem in her memoir/autobiography?

Following the text of the news-report, she: a) declares herself “hurt” and “angry” about the fact that the ancestry discrepancy was being discussed at all; b) classifies the questions as “constant attacks” and says the attacks “really threw me” – thus i) questions are “attacks” and ii) one can never go wrong by claiming one is a victim of them; c) these attacks came upon her “Bam! … out of left field”, as if i) the possibility that she had consistently misrepresented herself in order to qualify for educational and employment preferment (and possibly public funds) had never occurred to her as being a rather serious possible subject for inquiry and as if ii) such “attacks” were either outrageous or completely un-called for; d) a bit of vivid metaphor: the question doth “launch a rocket at me”, she writes – thus she is the victim of a rocket-attack; e) when a campaign opponent mentioned this rather serious problem she said he “attacked my dead parents” – neat, except the focus of the problem is her own actions and not her “dead parents”; f) further, she reports “I was stunned by the attacks” – meaning the questions, which she seeks to deflect here (in best Playbook style) by instead describing what she claims to be the emotional effect on her, although in such a way as to make herself seem an innocent victim who had no reason whatsoever to imagine that she would or could or should be questioned about this long-standing pattern of misrepresentation; f) she proffers anecdotal “family lore” that she says she grew up with, about the family’s tribal ancestry (‘evidence’ that only she can see and know, in best ‘spectral evidence’ style).

Readers of this site might find little of this type of “smoke screen” unfamiliar.

My cousin, Kenneth Ramey,is 1/4 Cherokee, his family's not on the Cherokee list either. Lot's of Cherokees refused to sign the list after having endure the Trail of Tears (The forced move from the eastern U.S. to Oklahoma by the U.S. government. Trust was an issue. If your family was on the Cherokee list you got and get large payments for oil rights in Oklahoma. So Senator Warren, who should be president in my opinion, can still be a Cherokee with no record back up. FYI.

Yeah, and I'm a descendent of Marc Antony and Cleopatra (a 'parchment' has been unearthed that implies that their union resulted in a child according to Harvard Egyptologists), the import of which is right up there with Warren the Liars claims and all those other Indian and warrior princess wannabe's running around out there.

Only the inward-focused lefty brain could ever give a hoot about such nonsense.

Jim, Fr. Kelly loves his "day job"; he entered the seminary 10 years after working in another field.He has been interviewed by many as the video has been favorably watched by 30 million. In addition, he is working on his 3rd album-has been singing for years. You seem to be alone in your disdain. Sorry that you say "bah humbug". The various churches that I have been in all of Holy Week have been packed with worshippers and we haven't even had Easter Sunday yet. Wow!!

I hear you Josie, 3 albums huh? Good on him, as they say in Erin. It's not because he's a catholic priest that I don't care for his singing; believe me. (There's a plain faced nebbishy looking kid on the Voice right now that can sing so well. Him I like; and a younger woman, Kat who also is very good)

I'm happy you enjoyed your Easter. I should have left out the bah humbug and let the "happy easter all" be.

I attended a Passover Seder, and read a large part lof the Seder readings, Sunday.

I was respectful and refered to god many times in the reading. Wierd but o.k. I did it out respect to my friends traditions. The talk about freedom and justice in the readings was beautiful and the wishing of peace to all nationalities was beautiful. But there is still Israel's horrible behavior towards the Palestinians, their own cousins. So people don't always live up to what they say. You should be familiar with that in your faith. I know you are.

Hey Delphin you want an imaginary after life that's your business. But expecting others to believe in it and worse tip our hats to a "reality" that a) isn't real and b) you have 0 proof for, is nuts and fascistic to boot. Celebrate being Catholic till forever. More power to you; but pay your bills first. And raped Catholic children are you bills. They are your outstanding debts. Howl about Hollywood but Hollywood perpetrators are miniscule compared to the crimes your church leadership enabled. If Hollywood movers and shakers raped kids. SEND THEM TO JAIL. If catholic priests raped children, send them to jail along with the cardinals and bishops that helped them do it.

The most helpful thing to do with a proffered link is to explain what one sees as being relevant in it.

On the 18th at 1043AM we instead simply get a link. If I recall this site correctly from the last time I looked at it (some months ago) we can expect nothing more than the same type of material we got from another ‘historian’ proffered by this commenter, Deschner – who mimicked scholarly format (replete with books quoted and various academic stylings) but managed to put up nothing but a whole bunch of problematic assertions; his material was discussed at length here at that time.

For any readers taking the time to check the link, I would advise being careful for historical inaccuracies large and small, all of which go to feed a general and sustained animus against the Church. We might recall – just as one example – Deschner’s characterization of post-1919 Concordats as “alliances” with assorted (and new) European governments created by the collapse of the various imperial regimes throughout Europe and Eurasia.

Whereas, of course, a Concordat is not an “alliance” but merely a diplomatic agreement specifically tailored to how the Church will be allowed to conduct ministry under the new government. The Concordats were necessitated in the post-war period after 1918 because such arrangements as had been made with the now-nonexistant imperial regimes were null and a host of new ‘governments’ had cropped up in former imperial lands; arrangements had to be re-negotiated with each government – Soviet, fascist or Nazi, autocratic or democratic – that had replaced the imperial regimes.

So I would advise readers to be careful in assessing whatever this article in the link has to say.

I also recall that among this site’s list of ‘recommended’ or ‘resource’ sites are included SNAP, Bishop-Accountability, and VOTF (among others), all of which groups are considered by some to be ‘false-flag’ operations that are (somehow) tools of the Church. And yet material on this site is recommended to us. Go figure.

In regard to the 20th at 824PM: A “treaty” may be roughly the same as a Concordat, but the actual key point is that a treaty is not an “alliance” – which was the problem with Deschner’s historical manipulations. During the Cold War the US and the USSR signed various treaties but they were hardly in a diplomatic “alliance”.

Deschner – and probably this Open Tabernacle piece – tries to claim that by signing a Concordat with Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany then the Vatican had clearly and deliberately ‘allied’ itself with Fascism and Nazism. But Pius XI had entered into numerous Concordats with the various post-WW1 governments (including the Soviet Union), as I mentioned in my prior comment here and in the extended discussion of Deschner back when his material was first proffered here. Yet the Vatican can consequently no more be said to have ‘allied’ itself with those governments than the US can be said to have allied-itself with the USSR by signing various treaties with the USSR.

What it interesting in all of this is that Deschner’s/ Open Tabernacle’s approach to history closely resembles the Abusenik approach: a) an imprecise use of terms in order to b) conveniently make the target seem evil or nefarious.

It remains to be seen whether in such a problem we are seeing i) a basic deficiency in language and historical skills that have led otherwise well-intentioned individuals down an inaccurate path or ii) a deliberate (and quite possibly malicious) manipulation of terminology for the convenience of an agenda.

And surely there has been much material in comments on this site about the similar misuse of terms in the characterizations made in various stories and allegations.

To the long list of amazingly coincidental I-was-there or I-am-related-to claims that we have seen, we now – by yet another remarkable coincidence – can add that JR has a relative who is a full quarter Cherokee but whose family does not, apparently, appear on the Dawes list of the Five Civilized Nations (which was compiled in the very late 19th and very early 20th century, over half a century after the actual Trail of Tears).

Which leaves us – in an amazing resemblance to the Abusenik Story Problem – with nothing but a claim and no supporting evidence except claimed anecdotal memories unknowable to anyone else.

One might imagine that if the claim of Cherokee lineage (which resulted in substantial gains to the claimant in preferment and subsequent gains in employment, status, and emolument) is true, then the claimant would put some effort into demonstrating the truth of the claim: other relatives who also can corroborate the family stories, genealogical searches, perhaps even a simple DNA test. It remains to be seen whether any such will be forthcoming. In that way, the entire matter could be put resolved, one way or the other.

But for the moment, we have nothing but the claimant’s highly doubt-inducing efforts to deflect attention from the subject (as I discussed in a prior comment on this thread) and the refusal to put forward or release various applications on which she did (or did not) claim ‘Native American’ status (and thus gain access to the many preferential advantages that status bestows in current government usage).

But apparently the ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ (the formal academic term for a predisposition to doubt assertions made by various authoritative sources, whether individuals or institutions) – which we have so often seen deployed against the Church as well as against individual bishops and clerics – is not supposed to be applied equally to anybody whose advantage would greatly be served by making this or that claim or set of claims.

At any rate, at this point it is certainly open to question just how much information we have actually received in that “FYI”. Let us stay tuned for further interesting developments.

The good news is that the racist and biased laws that once promoted/supported 'affirmative action' (what an oxymoron!) will soon be a can't-be-soon-enough distant past memory (nightmare) in the US; one that will put the nation back on the road to happiness and prosperity for all- based upon their God-given rights and talents, and not based upon their skin color, gender, sexuality, ethnicity or religion, which can be no more eloquently stated than it already was by MLK.

In regard to the 22nd at 350PM: If JR had not noticed, the proof already in front of him in the discrepancy of definition of terms: a ‘treaty’ is not the same as an ‘alliance’. A treaty-of-alliance is only one of many types of treaties that are possible. Thus, for example, in the Cold War, we signed a variety of treaties with the USSR in regard to nuclear non-proliferation – among other things – and yet we were not formal allies of the USSR in the Cold War.

Moving along then to the 22nd at 354PM: I had been referring to the Cold War era when – as I pointed out above here – we signed various treaties with the USSR and yet were not, in the Cold War, the allies of the USSR.

Thence to the 22nd at 346PM: Yes, “intelligent people” do indeed “know that there are coincidences in life”. But the same intelligence also tips them off when they encounter a highly-improbable and far-more-than-randomly-expectable concentration of ‘coincidences’, especially when they are asserted i) after the fact and ii) with absolutely no supporting evidence.

Thus then – since the point has now been raised specifically – any intelligent reader would have to consider the number of such ‘coincidences’ which are on record here as having allegedly happened to JR.

Merely working from memory, my list of those ‘coincidences’ that satisfy both criteria (i) and (ii) would include: a) in the discussion about the Los Angeles document cache, JR claimed a relative who had pursued the marvelous dual-career of a Lieutenant (if memory serves) in the Detective branch of the LAPD and also an “assistant” to the FBI Director; b) in the discussion about the Irish abuse problem, JR claimed that he had at some point visited the very hospital under discussion; c) in the discussion about Deschner’s material and the Vatican’s role in WW2, JR claimed that had visited Auschwitz (and included an inane comment about the view of the hills surrounding the place, as if from a tour book); d) in the discussion of some point on a recent thread, JR claimed (at least by implication) that he had had a conversation with a noted world-renowned author; e) in a discussion about Jeff Anderson, JR claimed he had stood next to him at some point; f) while attending a class reunion at the high-school where his allegations had been sited, JR claimed he was involved in the heroic extinguishing of a house-fire down the street; g) while discussing on this very thread the Cherokee Nation, JR claimed that he had a Cherokee relative with precisely the same issue as was under discussion; h) while discussing on this very thread Amy Berg who is prepping some sort of ‘documentary’, JR claimed he had been to her house (To blow the leaves? For a cocktail party? On a Hollywood ‘star’ tour-bus? ).

This list – and I do not guarantee that it is exhaustive – surely seems a far higher-than-randomly-expectable bunch of (conveniently) au point ‘coincidences’.

Even if we make some allowances for the vertiginous pomo theory that there is x) ‘reality’ and then there is y) ‘personal reality’ and either (x) and (y) are different but can both be legitimately characterized as ‘reality’ or else there is only (y) and (x) is merely an oppressive conceptual construct imposed on the many by the elite few … even with such allowances, we are still faced with an awful lot of coincidences. Far too many coincidences.

But without the ‘coincidences’, no stories, and if no stories, then the Playbook would have to face the actual concepts and the problems. For this eventuality, the Playbook recommends making the stories as distractingly vivid as possible, and – in a neat two-fer – somehow using them to at least appear to establish one’s creds and authority without actually having to address the actual conceptual problems and issues.

This is basically just deliberate fantasy in the service of the argument-from-authority.

Some viewers may have seen the early-1970s Brit documentary on WW2 entitled ‘World At War’, narrated finely by Olivier. In one of the early episodes, a then-middle-aged German woman recalled the swooning excitement when she and other young girls were allowed by the SS to approach Hitler at some ceremony in the early or mid-1930s. She recalled (I am quoting from memory here) that there had been a girl in her village who had managed to shake Hitler’s hand and ‘from that moment on she was considered like a saint in our village’. If the girl had then insisted that she be the ultimate arbiter of all matters having to do with Germany and the Reich, in affairs foreign and domestic, merely on the basis of having shaken Hitler’s hand in a mass ritual, then that would be an example of the spurious use of the ‘argument from authority’.

But imagine if such a person had come back from the mass ceremony, having been the only person from the village to have gone, and then claimed to have shaken Hitler’s hand, and on that basis demanding to be the ultimate go-to person in the village on all matters having to do with Germany and the Reich, in affairs foreign and domestic … well, you see the even more serious problem with that.

You won't even tell us who you are. So why should we believe your being truthful about anything you say? You aren't truthful about who you are here from the start of each of your posts. Your name is a lie.

Are we supposed to believe you're the brains and Delphin's the invasion force in the latest "onward Christian Soldiers" show?. The last people, who tried to pass religion off as an automaticly virtueous standard for the state, above criticism, called themselves fascists.

I was at Amy Berg's home to pick up the video tape of me that Amy took when I handcuffed myself to Mahony's throne. She happened to be there in the cathedral, filming she was a CNN producer at the time. I needed evidence that I was non violent for my trial. Welcome to the big city. Sometime things are serendipitis.

Hey D, after SNAP and my being raped I accept no one automatically as virtueous simply by saying they care about victims. Actions speak louder than words.

As far as my other cousin, John Colman, the former LAPD Lt. Detective and later after leaving the LAPD, was assistant to L.Patrick Grey the head of the FBI after J Edgar Hoover, He's still was my cousin. (Now dead from lung cancer) He still held those jobs and later taught at Stanford.

I went to visit his x wife and children in Ireland. I was let off by his son at a gorgeous Georgian mansion garden, a painting class was going on Carol the x was attending. I hadn't seen her since I was 12. I was nervous There were 5 ladies there. I said , "Only women attend?". Carol said, "Blessed art thou amongst women". And we were friends for life.

My Cherokee cousin is still alive, however and customizing cars and winning car shows with his efforts. (I'd have him call you P but you are invisable). He lives in Lancaster Ca. (He's also a rabid racist, [edited by moderator]) We have had many conversations around race as you might imagine. I told him: Black people have been better friends to me than most in my family have. And that visiting him, where the N word flies all day, made me feel like i was betraying them. Now he doesn't use it in front of me. Nice. Not enlightenment but nicer for me. FYI

You do realize, 'Mr. Truthful', that you just outed your 'Cherokee' cousin, by name and address, as an avowed racist, don't you? Why not send it all off to the nearest chapter of the New Black Panthers - after you've taken out life insurance (another jackpot for you!) on the poor bastard.

Maybe you spoke to Marianne Williamson, and her child, at Auschwitz, right after your rendezvous with Amy Berg and her child and Harry Hay and his 'child', and all your other little friends, who were there, also ("…and Toto, too…!"); then, you all got on a plane and went to Galway, Ire.

Why not just roll it up into a neat little ball of….'something', put a bow on it and 'stowe it' away in your little trunk of memories locked away safely up in your attic (where you keep your deceased mother in her rocking chair…."Norman Bates") so that we can all move on from "YOU" and your imaginary friends and life, already?

There are kids (true pre-pubescent innocents, not sexually-active/promiscuous/experimenting 'gay' adolescents) out there being raped by non-Catholics everywhere, now, today - don't you care how much more damage you permit as you consistently attempt to deflect/derail debate and discussion with your narcissistic fantasies?

In regard to the spate of comments following mine of the 22nd at 539PM, I simply point out that we have nothing more here than repetitions of the same assertions that were made originally – and let readers decide how many ‘coincidences’ or ‘serendipities’ can be believed before breakfast.

However there is one substantive point to be made: on the 22nd at 1001PM we are once again given the bit about ‘names’, as if real-names do anything at all to improve the quality of comments (examples to the contrary are easily and vividly available here). Whether a real-name does anything to make a comment more “truthful” is also part of the package, and readers may consider that as they will.

Using a screen-name is hardly not-“truthful” – it is not in any way a lie to say I am ‘Publion’. Once again, we see the Abusenik looseness with terms that they toss-around, and once again one might consider just how much of a role this characteristic played in the claims and stories and allegations.

I put up questions and ideas – they do not require any reader to assume anything since they make few assertions that must be taken solely on the credibility or presumed ‘truthfulness’ of myself as a commenter. Rather, the ideas and questions, and the explanatory material, can be considered by each reader for rationality, coherence, and logical competence. And the readers may judge as they will. I do not demand that they ‘believe’ me nor insist that they ‘trust’ me; instead, I offer material that they can think about and judge for themselves.

So my material does not require readers to judge my ‘truthiness’ because I make no assertions that are unexplained or un-grounded or that qualify as those category-iii assertions I discussed in a recent comment.

The remark trying to somehow connect religion and “fascists” can stay up there where it was put to twist in the wind. I have made no claims to being “automatically virtuous” [corrections supplied] and the bit about passing-off religion as “an automatically virtuous [ditto] standard for the state” makes no sense that I can see, especially in light of any material I have put up in comments.